Gifted
by Slittlej
Summary: Michael Ginsberg, once one of the brightest bulbs on Mad. Ave., grapples with a mind that's gone south. Will he ever be the same again? Will Peggy? Peggy O. Michael G.
1. Chapter 1

Mr. Michael Ginsberg, advertising wunderkind, and a psychiatrist's wish fulfillment. _They came and took me away, ha, ha_..._they came 'cause they think I'm insane, uh, uh..._ Those words ricochetted through his brain like bullets. Today was Michael's waterloo. He raised his head up high enough to admire how well _they'd_ strapped him into this gigantic hospital bed in Bellevue, those minions of the Machine, the thief, now calling the shots now at the office. Michael laughed, a sardonic chuff of air escaping his lips. "Bellevue, calling. Ginsberg's, falling. All the way down." A more rational part of himself winced as he grinned like a madman. He was the '69 version of _Mad_ison Avenue. But, he was neither smug, nor monied. Nor a metaphor for what the country was going through, upheaval.

Metaphors were okay, but similes suited him better. Chuckling, he quipped, "Peggy is as cute as a kitten, as opposed to Peggy is a kitten. No," Michael growled. "Peggy's a tigress." He pictured her vividly with a striped pelt, long tapering whiskers and freakishly longer fangs and claws. "Go get 'em, Tiger…" She could pounce with the best of them. Those at SC&P were well aware just how well she could.

In the next breath, Ginsberg bellowed, "Well, they told _him_ I was born in a concentration camp!" He yelled it loud enough so the nurses manning their station could hear distinctly. "Where my mother died. So they told Morris. Unsubstantiated..." Not one nurse made a move to see what was wrong. They'd been given instructions to stay clear until the attending physician signed off. Michael never believed the torture camp run by Nazis story in the first place. Denial, denial, denial. His adopted father, Morris, had gotten Michael's tale of woe from the Swedish orphanage. It was fodder for the dinner table when the older folks of the neighborhood got together to add stories of their own into the mix. Their tales of atrocities had never left him, having imprinted indelible marks on his psyche at a tender age. Now, as a young adult, who called this land draped in red, white and blue home, something "evil," as the saying went, "was afoot." Something comparably abominable with Nazis was seeking to gain the upper hand and take over...

Michael licked his lips, thirstier than someone who had eaten an entire bag of salty pretzel sticks. Which he loved by the way, but craved ice cold water more, given the situation. He grasped for the buzzer, wanting to signal a nurse. An exercise in futility, as things stood. The buzzer was just out of reach. Not one to quit when he wasn't ahead, he kept going at it, straining every strand of his being to seize the calling device. As he struggle, it dawned on him again how mechanism-dependent everyone was. The mechanizing of the Western World was the reality, day-by-day. Rod Serling was smiling right now. Michael felt cut off, as he so often felt, typically a heartbeat away from disconnect, after disconnect, after disconnect. He ceased struggling, blinking several times and threw his soaking head, drenched in sweat, back upon the rigid pillow. He was a creative person, chock full of wild and raw talent. The bane of his life was having to deal with those unwilling to give him his due. Don had summed it up one day: "I don't think about you at all." Stan often reminded him: "Ginsberg, you're certifiable. Y'know that." And Peggy, ambitious, deceptively naïve Peggy, well. She was a whiz at humoring him, she would protest. But, she did, ever so sweetly and he couldn't say he truly minded. Peggy was a gem, a modern woman with a filet mignon heart. And now she had his nipple.

A lot he cared that Don or Stan merely tolerated him. Peggy's approval, or the lack thereof, mattered.

His work stood alone and apart. Not odd, not myopic—singular, like Da Vinci's _Mona Lisa_, or Michelangelo's _David_. He was an artist amid crass mediocrity. Van Gogh had cut off his ear; he'd done the same with his nipple. Suffering for one's art was as old as the renaissance. Had critical, double-dealing Don, the darling of Madison Avenue, ever suffered? Michael bucked in the bed, endeavoring to springboard the buzzer closer to his questing fingers.

No joy, whatsoever with that. He had knocked the buzzer farther off to the side so it teetered on the edge of the railing. Michael shut his red-rimmed eyes in naked frustration. Angrily, he thought back to another time he hadn't cut it. A presentation that he'd judged to be inspired hadn't panned out the way he had wanted it to. Mulling that over, he soured. During that presentation, a switch had gone off in his head and he hadn't been able to hold back. He had highlighted more of the product's negatives, which were glaringly obvious, rather than stressing its positives. The outcome had been dismal. He'd bombed, and Don and the rest of the staff gleefully had held it over his head.

"My pitches, every single one, are brilliance in action," Michael murmured, sweltering in the standardized hospital gown. Fresh air was non-existent in the room; windows were sealed tight, for obvious reasons. There were instances of patients freeing themselves from their bindings and using open windows to exit life.

There it was again, that hum…humming. The identical sound coming from the agency's brand new imposing IBM computer! Michael squirmed in the bed, his eyeballs circling his prison in the guise of hospital room. The thing had displaced him and the staff, forcing them to inhabit a smaller workspace. If that werent' monstrous enough, now the Machine was eating away at his brain. It was only a matter of time before everyone's brains would be attacked.

The Machine was all set to change, control and ultimately replace humans. This ideology was the centerpiece of his psychosis. Machines were coming for them all.

"Help! Help! I can't get away! I'm tied down and can't get up! It's here—it's here—it's here!" he yelled, his chest heaving. Fat beads of sweat splotched his forehead.

The bizarre messages embedded in the humming frightened the wits out of him.

"Stop it—stop it! Stop!"

As had happened at the office, the same was happening here. Here was worse, though. Here, he was powerless, unable to clog his ears with tissue to block the incessant thrum. Bound hands were useless! Bound feet too… The Machine had him just where it wanted him; he stood to lose everything!

"No—no—no! Please—stop!"

And then a host of words he'd overheard several doctors whisper replayed in his mind. A spate of foreign words: _psychosis, paranoia, auditory hallucinations. Distorted perceptions of reality. Sedation, Thorazine, Stelezine, Haldol _flooded his brain. Words the IBM ogre was ordering these doctors to say, co-conspirators, one and all, in white coats. The monolithic Machine was the enemy and he had to find some way to defeat it. The sneaky thing wanted to erase him along with the rest of humanity. Why didn't anyone else at the office get that? Why was he the only one who got it in spades? His mission was to make everyone understand so they would help him vanquish the monster.

His life, _her_ life, everybody's depended on it…

He suddenly recalled Peggy once having said, "We're all one, perhaps two, synaptic misfires away from madness."

No one at that late afternoon meeting had laughed. Insanity was nothing to joke about.

Neither was the inferno this room was becoming with the passage of each draggy second.

"Nurse, Nurse," Michael hollered, intermittently. "Somebody. Anybody!" His face was a tableau of chagrin, his pleas for help disavowed. "Help!" Nobody came. Had he become the last person on earth? Had the Monster won, wiping out all life? He shuddered, slipping deeper into the abyss of his own psychotic landscaping. Following a few minutes of catatonia, he fought against the restraints again, thrashing his head back and forth, pounding his noggin into the pillow, just short of foaming at the mouth. In his mind, disjointed fragments of an imagination gone amok urged him to keep raging against the Machine. He never considered how futile that was.

He couldn't allow the automatous usurper, who had stolen his creative turf and who had insidious designs on everyone at Sterling Cooper & Partners ultimately win.

He must keep on trying, mustn't give up now! Even if _they_ gagged him, the hue and cry would roar from his throat. "Peggy, Peggy, you've got to be all right! Before it's too late you've gotta get out of New York! It's not safe here. Not as long as _it's_ here! Even your fangs and claws won't save you. Innovate!" His manic cries intensified until the door of his 'cell' opened and in walked Peggy, doe-like Peggy, in the flesh. Seeing her was a relief, putting the kibosh on his hysteria.

Yes, she tiptoed to his bedside, having been granted permission to look in on their latest raving psycho, who had catapulted headlong over the edge. "Michael…" She noticed that he shivered at the mention of his name. Instinctively, she reached for his hand, clasping it, holding onto it fiercely, hoping to comfort him. This couldn't be happening to Michael Ginsberg, ran through her mind.

He hit her with a stare wilder, and wider-eyed than she'd ever seen before. "Peggy, you escaped. Thank God!" His big eyes were glued to hers, which always seemed to express more than what she spoke. "You can't go back to the office!"

She had no words. Her wish that his stay would be temporary dried up like a fragile seed. He had flipped-out but good, and that was so bad. Bemused, she shifted her gaze from his face to his bantam chest now shy a nipple. She imagined they'd sewn him up. How bizarre all of this was. She wondered how much pain he was in, emotionally as well as physically. Anxiety gripped her. "H-how are you doing?" She squeezed his hand tighter. He returned the heartfelt handclasp as she nibbled on the edge of her lower lip.

"Bet-better now that y-you're here." He yearned to be free of this updated version of a rack, circa the Middle Ages. "Promise me," he demanded, his voice racked with agitation.

"What? Anything," she, uh huh, humored. She was a natural at it. What could she do to help him? It all was so Frankenstein-ish.

"Stay here with me. Promise you'll stay. If you go back to the office, you'll cease to exist."

Patiently, she assured, "I'm staying with you for as long as they'll let me."

"Good. Good." His voice faded. "We might be safe for a little while. S-C-A-P is history." A brightness rippled beneath his facial skin. "Come away with me." The pressure he exerted on her hand intensified, causing hers to jerk in reflex. Her hand remained where it was though, in his bearish lockdown. Her eyes darted every which way about the room. She twitched, feeling trapped. Telling herself to calm down, she relaxed. He needed her. Sorry this had happened to him, she coddled, "As soon as you're better…we'll see."

"I'm fine! I'm really fine, you know. They've got me like this to satisfy the Machine! It wants me here, out of the way." His eyes reignited in hysteria. "I'm trussed up like a gooney bird." More collectedly, he declared, "The bleeding finally stopped."

"That's good, Michael. That's very good." Grimacing slightly, Peggy pictured his shriveling nipple still in the benign gift box, which she had thought was jewelry. Worst present ever. "W-why did you do it?" Having asked the question, she realized he was probably incapable of supplying any form of rational answer. Sadly, he was out of his mind.

He cleared his scratchy throat. "Like I told you—I saved my manhood. I'm no worm! I'm a man, liberating myself from subversion! Eradication! I drained off the poison. I'm as creative as I ever was-once again. Peggy, you too must purify yourself!" His sight slammed squarely into her bosom. The light in his eyes burned brighter still.

_Don't get him started, again_, Peggy warned herself, with a light sigh. _He is very, very disturbed_. "Of course you do, Michael. Of course you do." Suddenly, she wanted to cry. He had snapped, full blown. He faced a tough, long road of anti-psychotic medicinal intervention, coupled with therapy in a mental institution, ahead of him. His razzle-dazzling career was on hold. Maybe it was done, finito. But, make no mistake, Michael Ginsberg, in his right mind, was a razzle-dazzler. Had been since day one, making his mental implosion even more of a fiasco.

Softly, he tweaked, "Peggy, the Machine is out to get us one-by-one. You've got to believe me. Do you?"

"Yes, Michael. Yes. I believe you. Try to relax. Breathe. Breathe." He believed she did believe, heeding her as though she were his doctor. Peggy pressed her advantage. "There. That's better. You're going to be all right." Not giving it another thought, she promised, "I'll help you, Michael. It's going to be okay." She bathed him with empathy as he lay in that bed, a poster boy for catharsis. His plight wrung her heart. She did the only thing she could do for him, be present. He wasn't about to relinquish her hand anytime soon. Peggy waited for him to say something more.

"Do you like my gift?" Withering before his very eyes, she choked through a sob, reliving the horror of his severed, bloody nipple nestled amid excelsior paper peeking up at her when she'd opened the box. "I'll take that as a 'yes.'"

She drew out each syllable of her softly spoken, breathless words, blinking back tears. "Close your eyes, Michael. Try to sleep."

No sooner were the words out of her mouth when physicians, armed with the rainbow of meds Michael Ginsberg sorely needed, flowed through the opened door, stipulating that she must leave.

"I'll. I'll…" Flustered, pushing her words out, Peggy made her last bid for sounding upbeat. "I'll be seeing you." She bent over the bed railing to kiss his damp forehead. The grooves it bore seemed to jump up at her.

"Promise!" Michael ejaculated, licking his bone dry lips.

"I promise." She gave a wane smile, swaying on her feet.

"And could you see about getting me some ice water? Just cubes, even. It's hotter than a furnace in this desert!"

Peggy's glance skittered from Michael to the flock of doctors, indicating with a scowl that they see to that. Before she departed, she cast him a final look, wondering where she might wind up visiting him. Here in Bellevue, or a sanitarium in a country setting? Neither prospect was inviting. The psychiatric community would have its work cut out for itself with Michael, the hot shot gone bust. On the routine train ride home, which had a surreal feel to it, she whisked away tears as blasé fellow travelers tussled with problems of their own. Peggy rode on with them, as oblivious as they were to their immediate surroundings. Michael Ginsberg, a victim of his own creative genius?, she pondered. Fresh tears trickled, spotting up her light blue skirt as her head drooped lower. Peggy mashed the palm of her hand squarely into her runny, red nose, sniffling.

Once home, she brewed herself a strong cup of Earl Grey tea, feeling a wellspring of emotions for her fallen colleague. Later that night before turning in, and forcing herself to stop thinking about Ted, Peggy made a solemn vow. She would read everything she could get her hands on about nervous breakdowns. Turning out her nightlight, immersing her moonlit bedroom in silver-gilded shadows, she shut her eyes. The room he was in materialzed behind her eyelids and she let out another despondent sigh.

What would the next visit be like?


	2. Chapter 2

_The next visit_, Peggy asked herself, contemplating what would cause her to pay Michael another visit. They weren't close, she wasn't even sure where he lived. Maybe it was out of a sense of loyalty? Or perhaps she just felt sorry for the man, the self-proclaimed upstart, who thought he was the advertising world's greatest gift. Shrugging, she waited for her subway, which was running late this morning. A week later, a whole week, she decided it might be time to give the hospital a call.

"Yes, hello...I'm inquiring about Mister Michael Ginsberg." Peggy lowered her voice, not wanting the entire office to overhear; her door stood wide open. She was behind her desk, on her feet, but made no move to go close the door. For one, long awful moment, she thought Stan was about to enter. He'd hesitated, giving every indication that he would, but at the last moment had changed his mind for some reason unknown to her. Her voice hushed, she continued, "He was admitted a week ago."

The voice on the other end of the phone line said with a brusque cadence, "Michael Ginsberg, you say? Wait. Wait one moment while I look him up."

Peggy nibbled on the corner of her lower lip, hearing the woman mumble distractedly at herself. "We work together. He broke down in our office, a week ago. Is he still a patient?"

Irritably, the feminine voice retorted, "I'm looking, I'm looking."

Peggy sighed, feeling as though she was imposing on this woman who was being paid to do this job. "Yes, yes. I know. I'm sorry." Stan was back at her office door, clearly debating with himself whether to enter or not. Peggy willed him to go away, unwilling to disclose what she was doing on the phone.

"Michael Ginsberg did you say?" the receptionist, sounding harassed, fired at her.

"Yes. That's right. Is he still a patient?" Peggy half-smiled, seeing Stan, yet again, undarken her doorway. _Disappear for a while, at least until I'm off the phone_, she biddened. _If I want to check on how Michael's doing, it's my business_. As though Stan had read her mind, he flitted off, announcing to anyone who cared that he was going to the kitchen because he was dying for a cup of coffee.

"Miss, I've located your Michael Ginsberg." Peggy wrinkled her nose, finding that statement about Michael being _hers_ comical. "He was discharged a day ago and it seems he has been insitutionalized." It was said with such finality, Peggy winced.

"Oh! Oh, I see. Can you tell me where they've taken him?" She prepared herself, not expecting to be told. Maybe that sort of information fell under the heading of being privileged information, reserved for family and close friends.

"Are you a relative?"

"Uh, no. Not exactly. As I said, we work together, in advertising." Hadn't she said that they were co-workers a moment ago? So much for people really listening when being told pertinent information. It troubled her that, more times than not, customer servicers regularly tuned her out.

A long pause intervened, confirming Peggy's foregone conclusion that she wouldn't be told squat. She could do some digging herself. How many psychiatric facilities were there, surrounding the greater New York area? Abruptly, the vague-sounding, disemboded voice deigned, "He's been transferred to the Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg."

"How far is that from Manhattan," Peggy wondered aloud. _He's been institutionalized. It's really happened_, resounded in her mind. _He won't be coming back to work any time soon,_ she analyzed, taking it hard.

Surprisingly, the annoying voice answered, "The facility is roughly sixteen miles from the city. They run shuttle service from Metro North."

"Sixteen miles. Oh, okay, well thank you very much for this information. Thank you. Thanks very much. Bye." No sooner had Peggy put the receiver down when Stan trouped into her office, brandishing his coffee. Her scowl leapt at him. "Stan, are those tags ready?"

"A half hour ago. You want 'em?"

"Of course I want them," she growled. "And try knocking sometimes."

"Hey, Peggy-"

"What?" she said dismissively, irritable.

Mocking her, he replied, "Knock...knock."

"_What_ do you want?"

"You think Ginsberg will resign?"

She shrugged, noncommital, convined he'd overheard the entire private phone conversation. Honing her irritably, she snapped, "Why? What have you heard?"

In true Stan Rizzo form, he smiled at her-wickedly. "You tell me..."

_I will not_, Peggy thought, equally wickedly. _You live to find out other's people's business. Well, mine's not up for grabs..._

"Tell you what?"

Stan, never one to stammer, declared: "Ginsberg's done."

Rolling her eyes, Peggy mildly replied, "So you've said. I say, we get back to work and leave speculation to the experts."

With a rollicking flick of his eyes, commensurate with his tongue, Stan lobbed, "Whatever you say, _Boss_."

"Tags, please."

Nodding, Stan sauntered out of her office, still chuckling to himself.


End file.
